Town in a Wild Moose Chase chm-3

by B. B. Haywood

  “Would you like more tea?” Annabel asked, reaching for the pot.

  “No I’m… I’m fine, thank you.” Candy looked back over at Elizabeth. “Was it about me? Your premonition? Is that why you asked me here?”

  “Not directly… but yes, I feel in some way you are connected to everything,” Elizabeth answered.

  Candy gulped, and suddenly her mouth was very dry. “Am I in danger?”

  “We don’t know,” Annabel said truthfully.

  “There have been no specific indications,” Isabel clarified.

  Candy focused on Elizabeth. “Can you tell me exactly what you… felt?”

  “It was… a darkness,” Elizabeth said in a voice barely above a whisper.

  A sudden gust of wind from out over the sea pushed at the house just then, rattling the windows and whistling under the eaves and around the chimney. The fire fluttered.

  Candy felt a chill go through her, though possibly it was due to a sudden draft brushing past her. She leaned forward and picked up her cup of tea. “I think I changed my mind. Could I have a refill, please?”

  Annabel smiled. “Of course, dear. I think we all could use another cup. If you would like something stronger, we have some pretty good whiskey in the cupboard.”

  Candy couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you, but I think I’ll pass.”

  “Would you prefer beer or wine?” Isabel asked.

  “We make our own blueberry wine,” Annabel added. “It’s quite good. We’ve entered it in a few contests.”

  “Came in second at the Fryeburg Fair,” Isabel announced proudly. “Sure you don’t want a glass?”

  Candy politely declined. She wanted to hear more about this darkness.

  So they told her.

  “As I said,” Annabel began, “some people thought Isabel—our grandmother Isabel—was a witch. But of course she wasn’t.” She paused. “Not really.” Another pause. “As long as you don’t count the premonitions.”

  “She had premonitions too?”

  “It seems to skip a generation,” Isabel told her.

  Candy glanced at Elizabeth, who was watching her coolly.

  “It goes back for generations, as far as we can tell from family accounts,” Annabel explained. “Where it comes from, we don’t know, but it’s inherited. When we realized as little girls that Elizabeth had her, well, her ability, should we say, we decided we’d have to protect and guide her. Now we’re happy here by ourselves.”

  “But how often do you have these… premonitions?” Candy asked, looking directly at Elizabeth.

  She shrugged, a waifish gesture. “Not so often now. When I was a teenage girl, I had them fairly frequently, once every two or three months—mostly just little things about family members and friends, and occasionally about someone else in the community. But they’re tapering off as I get older. Now I have them only a few times a year.”

  “Have you seen anyone about them?”

  “Who would she see?” Isabel asked, sounding slightly confused.

  Candy shook her head. “I don’t know. A doctor? A psychiatrist?”

  “She’s not crazy, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Isabel said, sounding a little defensive. “It’s just a trait, like the length of an earlobe or a cleft in the chin. Except this one isn’t physical or emotional—it’s something else.”

  “I see.” There was a silence in the room then, and Candy could hear the waves breaking against the rocks outside. “So how am I involved in this premonition?”

  “The darkness is attracted to you,” Elizabeth said.

  “In what way?”

  Another silence. Finally Annabel spoke. “Well, the thing is, it seems to be centered around you… and Ben Clayton.”

  Fourteen

  Twenty minutes later she headed back out into the cold, overcast day, which had grown noticeably gloomier while she’d been inside. The air had that sharp chill to it that was an indication of imminent snow, and the day felt rawer. As she pulled out Maggie’s keys and climbed inside the Subaru, she saw a few stray flakes flutter down from the sky, harbingers of what was to come. She knew it would start snowing steadily soon.

  It was perfect weather for the upcoming Sleigh and Sled Parade, which would take place later that afternoon. But it wasn’t ideal for what Candy had in mind next.

  Still, she was determined to go through with her plans. It was time to take matters into her own hands—despite her promise to do otherwise.

  She checked her watch. They were on a tight schedule. They had about an hour and a half before they had to get back to town to cover preparations for the parade.

  It would have to be enough time.

  Ben had called her while she’d been inside, and she’d excused herself briefly from the Foxwell sisters to take his call. The police had turned up nothing in their search for Solomon Hatch. It was as if the old hermit had disappeared into thin air. He hadn’t been seen or heard from in days. His cabin had been unlocked when they’d checked it, with the wood stoves still giving off heat and dishes still wet in the sink, so he hadn’t been gone for long. But there was no sign of him at the camp. They’d followed his tracks into the woods for a mile or so but lost them at a place where the snowpack had been disturbed. It was as if someone had deliberately covered up Solomon’s tracks so no one could follow him—or, at least, that’s what the police surmised, Ben had told her.

  “I noticed the same thing yesterday morning when I followed Solomon’s footprints into the woods,” Candy said softly into the phone. “He must be in danger. We have to find him.”

  Talking quickly in low tones, she briefly explained her unexpected summons to the home of the Foxwell sisters, and her creative solution for escaping the watchful eyes of Officer McCroy. “I have a couple hours before I have to be back in town,” she said to Ben. “Can you meet me at Blueberry Acres?”

  The time had come, she’d decided, to search the woods themselves.

  After she’d hung up, Candy had asked the sisters if they knew anything about Solomon’s disappearance, and if it had anything to do with Elizabeth’s premonition. But they had no more details for her—at least for the moment. “Elizabeth sometimes receives echoes,” Isabel said, “which help us interpret the premonition in the days after.”

  “It’s not an exact science,” Annabel added helpfully, “and it sometimes takes us a while to sort through it all. But if we’re all patient, Elizabeth will eventually reveal everything she has learned, and we will pass it all on to you. There will be more, I’m sure. All in good time.”

  All in good time… but what if Solomon didn’t have any time left?

  Ben was waiting for her when she pulled up in front of the farmhouse. In his casual yet ruggedly charming way, he was leaning back against his vintage 1980s, well-maintained cypress green Special Edition Range Rover, which he’d bought a few years ago from a retired mechanic and car collector up in Old Town. It needed a quart of oil every couple of weeks, and used too much gas, but Ben loved its angled exterior lines and functional yet comfortable interior, complete with leather seats. Plus, he often said, it could get him to the top of Mount Baxter in the middle of a snowstorm and had never failed to deliver him to his favorite fishing and camping spots, even at the height of mud season.

  He’d come dressed for the weather, having switched out his standard navy blue fleece jacket for something a little weightier, and added a knit cap, gloves, and boots. The oxford shirt and conservative tie were gone as well, replaced with a flannel shirt.

  He appraised her outfit as she stepped out of the Jeep, and grinned. “I guess the disguise worked.”

  “It worked. I almost ran into him, but he didn’t recognize me.”

  “Maybe that’s because you look a little like my Uncle Cecil.”

  “Is he the one who keeps pigeons in the attic of his garage?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Well, no wonder people keep giving me strange looks. But it did its job. So far, no Off
icer Jody.”

  Ben looked back along the driveway toward the main road. “He’s probably still searching for you, though. They think you’re going to lead them to Solomon Hatch so they can question him about this alleged body. It’s only a matter of time before Officer McCroy or Chief Durr shows up here.”

  “Then we should get going.”

  He looked her over again. “You want to change first?”

  Candy shrugged. “I’m fine. These old duds are actually pretty comfortable, and they’re plenty warm.”

  They walked side by side up through the blueberry field as the scattered snowflakes gathered into a light flurry. It wouldn’t stick for a while, but it made the hard-packed surfaces more slippery.

  “What did you find out from the Foxwell sisters?” Ben asked as they walked, their shoulders nudging each other on occasion.

  “Well, it was sort of odd. One of them—Elizabeth—has had a premonition.”

  Ben gave her a wry smile. “Really? That’s pretty rare, from what I’ve heard. The word around town is that the sisters are more eccentric than psychic, though of course that’s still up for debate. There apparently were a few occurrences twenty or thirty years ago that remain unexplained.”

  She gave him a sideways glance. “Have you researched them?”

  He grinned. “When you’re a reporter in a small town like this, you find that after a couple of years you’ve researched just about every possible angle to every possible story line to find something new to write about. I’ve talked to them on a few occasions. They seem friendly enough, and they’re fairly quiet. I’ve checked back through the records—this was a couple of years ago—but all I found were a few old clippings on microfiche from back issues of the newspaper.”

  “And what did they say?”

  Ben raised an eyebrow, and his tone turned more serious. “About thirty years ago, there was an outbreak of murders around town. They lasted for a period of eight or ten years, mostly through the eighties. The police couldn’t solve them, so at one point they approached the sisters, to see if they could help figure out what was going on. The sisters would have been only in their early twenties then. Elizabeth was just in her teens.”

  “And did they help?”

  “They did.”

  “And?”

  “From what I could tell, the resolution was murky. There were a few arrests, due in part to the sisters, who helped decipher some of the clues, but the murders kept happening. There was some talk that they were all connected somehow, though I don’t know all the specifics. According to the reports I read, the sisters got actively involved trying to solve the mystery and were making some headway. But that also put them in danger. They were threatened at one point, and it must have scared them a lot. They backed off and went quiet. I’ve tried to find out what really happened, but ran into a roadblock. The police declined to make some of the information public.”

  “Something scared the sisters off the case,” Candy said.

  “Sounds that way, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess that’s why they’ve been reluctant to get involved with these new murders that have occurred in town over the past few years.”

  “That would explain it,” Ben agreed, “but why did they decide to call you now?”

  They walked in silence for a few moments as Candy thought about that, but finally the answer came to her. “Because something’s changed,” she said.

  Ben gave her a curious look. “What makes you say that?”

  Candy shook her head uncertainly. “I really don’t know. Just a hunch, I guess.”

  More silence as Ben studied the trees at the top of the ridge ahead of them. “So did Elizabeth tell you what her premonition was about?”

  “She did. She said it had something to do with us.”

  “Us?”

  “You and me. She said it’s centered around the two of us.”

  “Well that sounds pretty weird. Did she tell you what this something is?”

  Candy nodded. “She called it a darkness.”

  He whistled. “That sounds ominous.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?”

  They stopped. They had reached the place where Solomon had fallen to the ground.

  “He came from that way,” Ben said, indicating the old hermit’s now indistinct tracks, which led up toward the trees on the right.

  “And he left that way,” Candy said, pointing off in a different direction, also still marked by the trail of Solomon’s footprints. “I followed those tracks yesterday but didn’t find anything.”

  Ben eyed the numerous tracks that spread across the field, including those made by the police, and finally pointed to the spot where Solomon had emerged from the woods. “Let’s head this way. Maybe we can find out where he came from, and that will give us some clues.”

  She nodded, and together they started toward the top of the ridge. “We’d better stay on our toes,” he told her as they walked, their breaths starting to come harder. “Glad I brought my GPS with me. I have this too.”

  He reached into one of his coat pockets and pulled out a small, military-style compass, which he handed to her. “I’ve had this since my days overseas. It came in handy a few times. Why don’t you hold on to it, just in case.”

  He reached for her right hand, placed the compass in it, curled her fingers around it, and continued to hold her hand. “Listen, let’s try to stay together, okay? If we get separated, just stay where you are and I’ll double back and find you. If worse comes to worst, you have the compass, so you can find your way back out. Just head south-southeast and you should come out somewhere near the farm. And promise me,” he continued, his tone turning more serious, “that if we do find something in there, you won’t do anything crazy.”

  Candy gave him an amused smile. “What makes you think I’d do anything crazy?”

  “Because,” he said, looking into her eyes, “I know you.”

  Fifteen

  The woods closed in around them.

  As they followed a path of fading footprints back through the trees, Candy couldn’t help but feel there was another world that existed here when humans weren’t around. The silence of the winter forest seemed to have a sound of its own, an ever-present whisper that came from all around them, disturbed only by the crunch of their boots on the snowpack and the rattle of bare branches in the faint wind. The woodland animals were invisible in the landscape, tucked into their dens or hiding spots, shivering silently as they waited for the visitors to pass.

  Or maybe they were hiding from something else.

  Ben must have felt it too, because he said nothing. Instead, his eyes scanned the woods ahead of them, carefully picking out the best path for them between the trees, bushes, outcroppings of rock, and fallen branches and trunks, eyes ever watchful.

  “Stay close,” he said to her again, in a low tone, as he detoured around a fallen pine tree with an extensive root system that had been plucked out of the ground at some point in the recent past, perhaps during one of the fierce spring storms of the past few years.

  Once they were on the other side of the fallen tree, Ben had difficulty picking up Solomon’s trail. There were several sets of footprints here, all moving around and across each other. It was probably a place where the police officers who had searched the woods the previous day had gathered to compare notes and decide their next move.

  After studying the area for a few minutes, Ben finally pointed to a set of footprints that angled off from the others, headed back into the densest part of the forest. “It’s just a hunch, but I’d say he came from that direction.”

  Candy followed his gaze. “Why that way?”

  “Well, the pattern on the bottom of the boots looks fairly well worn. My guess is Solomon doesn’t go shopping much. Plus they’re more indistinct than the other tracks, so it’s likely they were made earlier. And besides”—Ben pointed down at his handheld GPS device, which he’d pulled out of his coat pocket—“they lead off in the gene
ral direction of Solomon’s camp.”

  Candy whistled. “Wow, that’s impressive. You been reading a lot of mystery novels lately?”

  He gave her a boyish grin. “I lean more toward James Bond and old Alistair MacLean adventures. Shall we?” He tilted his head toward the miasma of grays, browns, and dark shadows at the heart of the forest, and they started off again.

  The footprints changed direction several times, first heading off in a northerly direction, then angling off to the northeast before swinging northwest. “It’s like he couldn’t decide which direction to head,” Ben said. “He was stumbling around.”

  “Maybe he was injured.”

  “Or scared.”

  “Because he was being chased?”

  Ben raised an eyebrow but didn’t answer.

  They followed the tracks into a low area, where they managed to cross over the thin ice of a frozen stream without falling in, and climbed up the bank on the other side. Here the trees were less dense, and the woods opened up, so they could see all the way to a rocky outcropping a few hundred yards away, at the top of a gradual slope.

  But Solomon’s tracks had disappeared.

  They searched the high bank in both directions, but all signs of him were gone.

  However, they soon came across another set of the large prints in the snow.

  “Too big for deer, and not quite the right shape,” Ben said, crouching down to get a better look. “They’re moose tracks.”

  Candy felt a chill go through her. “A moose? Out here?”

  Ben straightened. “That what it looks like, and from the size of the tracks he must be a big fellow.”

  Candy blinked several times and turned in both directions, searching the woods around them, suddenly alert.

  “Something wrong?” Ben asked, watching her.

  “I don’t know. It’s just… I saw a moose last night.”

  Ben grinned. “You did? Where?”

  “Behind the farm. I had trouble falling asleep, so I got out of bed to look out the window. And I saw it. It walked right out of the woods and turned up along the edge of the field, sauntering along as if it didn’t have a care in the world. So you think it’s the same one?”